‘Heaven Is For Real’ Bows With $3.7M Wednesday Estimate For Sony

Heaven Is For Real is headed towards at least $3.7mil on its opening day today for TriStar Pictures with estimates looking like $20M for the 5-day, according to Sony. The best news is that the film, based on the best-selling Christian book, got an A+ CinemaScore for those 35 and under and an A overall. The film is the latest in the faith-based genre to bow this year, following Son Of God and God’s Not Dead, however this one is right in time for Easter weekend. Son Of God from Fox debuted at the end of February with $25.6M its opening weekend, while God’s Not Dead garnered $9.2M and a very strong per screen average of almost $12,000 per screen when it opened on March 21. Heaven Is For Real has 2,417 runs.

Directed by Randall Wallace and starring fan fav Greg Kinnear, the film is about a four-year-old boy who has a near-death experience and reveals to his parents that he visited Heaven. The film centers on his father’s decision to tell the world. The true-life story is about the Burpo family: Colton and his parents, Sonja and Todd (a pastor) who are from a small town in Nebraska. Colton almost died when he was in the hospital during emergency surgery. After he recovered, he began talking about the experience he had and how he met relatives who had passed. He even recognized pictures of those relatives whom he had never met, including his great grandfather. Todd Burpo co-wrote the book based on the same name with Lynn Vincent. The original YouTube video posted three years ago where Colton talks about what happened to him has over 18.6M views.

Other pics opening this weekend are Transcendence(WB) starring Johnny Depp and Morgan Freeman, A Haunted House 2 (OPRD) starring Marlon Wayans, and the live-action nature film Bears (DIS).